1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to technology for estimating disease severity of motion disorder.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, with the progress of the aging society, the number of patients having the motion disorder increases. The motion disorder is a disease in which a handicap of motor function happens. Examples of the motion disorder are Parkinson's disease, a cerebral apoplexy, cervical myelopathy, dementia, mental disease. For example, the Parkinson's disease that is a representative disease of the motion disorder is an intractable disease to bring a big obstacle for everyday life by trembling of hands and tightening of muscle and so on. There are about 145,000 patients of Parkinson's disease in Japan.
Conventionally, for a diagnosis method of the motion disorder, a method on which a doctor examines the patient by watching the motion of the patient and estimates the motion disorder by using score which shows disease severity is common. For, example, in the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, UPDRS (Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale) is used as an estimation standard (indicator) of the disease severity of Parkinson's disease widely. The doctor estimates the motor function by plural motions such as walk or fingers tapping motion (motion of a subject person repeatedly opening and closing a thumb and a forefinger of hand) with UPDRS.
But, so that the doctor performs a diagnosis and estimation with UPDRS subjectively, individual difference occurs between doctors. In other words the method with UPDRS is not objective. Technology to calculate an objective indicator for the disease severity of the motion disorder by the measurement and analysis of the fingers tapping motion is developed to solve this problem (refer to JP2005-152053A, JP2008-246126, “Kandori et al.,” Quantitative magnetic detection of finger motions in patients with Parkinson's disease. “, Neuroscience Research. Vol. 49, No. 2, 2004, pp 253-260”). For the objective indicator, characteristics calculated by waveform (distance waveform, speed waveform, acceleration waveform) of the fingers tapping motion is used, and the effectiveness as the objective indicator for the disease severity of Parkinson's disease is examined (M. Murata, et al, “Examination for the efficacy estimation of the finger tapping device to the patient of Parkinson's disease”, The second motor function meeting for the study, 2007 Nov. 16, p 22)
But, it is often that the patient of the motion disorder develops various symptoms at the same time. About the Parkinson's disease, it is known that the plural symptoms such as four major signs (tremor, rigidity, akinesia, loss of postural reflex) develop at the same time. Therefore, it is difficult to estimate precisely disease severity of the motion disorder from characteristics which shows the degree of single symptom. In addition, it is often that the motion disorder develops in a senior person. Therefore there is a problem with a doctor making a subjective decision to be easy to mistake motor functional decline by the aging for the motion disorder.
This invention is intended to solve these problems. A purpose of this invention is to estimate disease severity of the motion disorder with high precision, by considering motor functional decline by the aging, and estimating plural symptoms of the motion disorder generally.